Field Access: :star:
Field access was only protected in Ax (no questions asked, and nothing else you can do about it)
Now: if you havent specified the access they are still protected, but you can specify public, or private

try
{
}
catch(Exception::Error)
{
// you can add multiple catch types as normal
}
finally
{
// this code always gets called. So you can do things like close file handles
}

using statement: ⭐
Using is here, this is very neat. It destroys the object and the object only exists within the context of the using. Object in the using should implement IDisposable, so all / most of the Streams are an example or webRequests.

Earlier I had posted about how to achieve File based logging in Ax, however after working with log4net on another project with .net I decided to implement debugging with Ax2012. This is because popping messages in the info log isint a very refined, besides at a customers site, after turning a few configuration keys on, the logging messages can be traced without writing extra code.

Log4Net: This is a very versatile library, if you look at the configuration files or Google around this, you will notice that it supports a wide variety of logging facilities and filters that can be applied. The overhead of using this library isint much.

The advantage of using is that the logging messages can be left inside the code (and you can even mark their category, and it can be configured in a certain way so that the debugging mechanism can be switched turned on or off for that category.

Implementing log4net in AX2012:

You could follow one of these posts and run an independent c# console project and test the log4net framework like in this blog. I wont be going through that part. What i will be showing is how to implement a library once created and added to AX2012, as AX2012 has its own configuration file which will need to be amended.

The C# project:

Create a C# project, add it to the AOT and add the log4net.dll to the c# project. Note that if you use Nuget there are issues adding it into Ax as the dll needs to be referenced with Ax too. So NuGet will not exactly help.

Create a config file called log4net.config (and this can be duplicated across to the AOS Server – More later)
Add the log4Net assembly to AX references. This is because the log4net assembly doesn’t get uploaded to the server directory, this double up is required as the log4net dll may not be stored in the csharp project in the AOT. Once this is done, then we are ready to call it from X++ or from other C# projects.

Now when you were creating the c# project you would have realized that you added parts to the configsections tag in the app.config and also added the log4net tags. These settings need to be transferred into the Ax config file. So in the applications server directory you will see a file ax32serv.exe.config , this is the file where you need to add the values too (: this is the same file where AIF services are registered)
Make the changes to the ax32serv.exe.config file so that we can start programming.

Log4Net’ing from X++
I create a Class called Class1 (a very original name)

public static server void writeLog()
{
//This uses the default log name - which is hardcoded in my project
System.Exception exc;
SHSAx.Logger.AxLogging logging;
SHSAx.Logger.AxLogging::Write(SHSAx.Logger.LogType::Info, "this is an info");
SHSAx.Logger.AxLogging::Write(SHSAx.Logger.LogType::Debug, "this is a debug");
SHSAx.Logger.AxLogging::Write(SHSAx.Logger.LogType::Error, "this is an Error");
SHSAx.Logger.AxLogging::Write(SHSAx.Logger.LogType::Fatal, "this is an Fatal issue");
SHSAx.Logger.AxLogging::Write(SHSAx.Logger.LogType::Warn, "this is a Warning");
}

I called these methods from a job to show the results. Note that this is a Server side solution. If you want this to be a client side then you may have to deploy the DLL to every client PC. For me calling a method on the server works well and all logs can be written on the server side.
You could dynamically create lognames based on the user, and then create an appender to capture only those messages.

Once done restart the AOS service and run the job.MyFirstLoggerAx000001.log

NOTE: to pick up the new C# project in X++ you may have to restart the AOS service. Also because we are reloading the configuration every time we call the logging class, there will be overheads. It will nice if the config file doesnt need to be changed.

Hopefully this can be turned into a more streamlined approach and we can get a common class / interface that we all can use to do some logging.

I came across this issue with adding dates to negative integers. Basically the issue is that you cant add a negative value to a date variable (but you can subtract a positive integer).
i.e. if x = -5, and date1 is 01/01/2012,
and you do date1 = date1 + x,
this results in a runtime error which says “Error executing code”. This error is not even caught by the catch block.

Ax2012 exposes the query service, and makes the queries available directly by a developer. these queries are static, Dynamic or User defined. Query Service [AX 2012]

Static queries are the simplest ones, all you need to do is to pass the query name, and you get the dataset in return. (Walkthrough: Calling the Query Service with a Static Query [AX 2012]) Works like a charm, except when you may want to filter on it (Lets say we want all items that are BOM types). You could filter the dataset in c# or your language of choice, but what if there are over 2000 items ?

Thats where Dynamic queries come in. There is a bit more work involved in it, but its not too much.

Firstly we need to create 2 classes. One which holds the query, and we add our ranges to it, and the second class which is a DataContract / Argument class which contains the parameters we define for the filtering. (or any special process for that matter)

In this example we will look into using the Query InventTable

1. Create the DataContract / Arguments class

We will create a class called MyInventTableQueryBuilderArgs which extends AifQueryBuilderArgs Class, and will be decorated with the DataContractAttribute, and the parmMethods with the DataMemberAttribute. This tehn exposes this class to the QueryService

[DataContractAttribute]
public class MyInventTableQueryBuilderArgs extends AifQueryBuilderArgs
{
ItemType itemType;
}
ItemType is what we will use as a filter. In order for it to be available in the QueryService, is to create a parm method[DataMemberAttribute]
public ItemType parmItemType(ItemType _itemType = itemType)
{
itemType = _itemType;
return itemType;
}

2. Create the QueryBuilder class
Create a class called MyInventTableQueryBuilder which extends the AifQueryBuilder class. Add the MyInventTableQueryBuilderArgs as a property of the class, and use the setArgs to populate this object.public class MyInventTableQueryBuilder extends AifQueryBuilder
{
MyInventTableQueryBuilderArgs args;
}//Used internally to access the args object
private MyInventTableQueryBuilderArgs getArgs()
{
return args;
}

This class also requires the initialize method to be overridden, and this is where we will populate the query ranges using the args object

queryRun = new QueryRun(query);
}
Compile the 2 classes and then run the incremental compile

Now for the better half – Visual studio

Create a project of your choice (I am using a Console application for simplicity), and in the language of your choice (I am choosing c#)
Add a Web service reference (Right click reference and choose Add Service reference)
In the URL enter the following URL (replace with the server where Ax is installed. The port 8101 can be replaced based on the installation port if differenthttp://AOSserverName:8101/DynamicsAx/Services/QueryService
also in the same screen (after clicking GO), enter the namespace as MyQueryService

The need for logging in Ax for me came from the .Net world of using Debug.Writeline , and then looking up the debug values from sysInternals dbgview.
However, to make a very quick and just basic configurable logging, i went to write the logs into a file.
This is a quick and dirty way to add logging capabilities into Dynamics ax.

The Macro values define if the logging capability is turned on, and also the filename (So it can be configured from the usr layer / production site)

I have tested this with Ax 2012 and it has worked pretty well so far, and i do not think Ax2009 should have an issue with it. This logging is so far restricted to file based logging, but I am looking at incorporating other forms like Debug.WriteLine, and will further look into incorporating log4Net (however i have a strong suspicion that this will be limited to server side, and only for Ax 2012).

Hope this brings enough joy to you out there.
Happy Logging

NOTE: before you run the test class in the project, please make sure to edit the Macro to specify the folder path (This can be set to a local directory, but please be advised, this method is “called from”)

UPDATE:

I have now updated the code to include 2 more logging features. Along with that made changes to the method to include the type of message being passes (i.e. warning, information or error. We shall see why)

1. Windows Event logging. – This enables you to you write into the Windows Event log directly. The log type (info , error, warning) will correlate directly to the log icons in the event viewer 🙂

2. Debug log: The most simplistic logging with .Net’s System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine is now included. Although i have seen that this also writes to the event log 😦 (as information only, probably something that is handled from x++ itself, so may not be a good idea to have it in a production server where it manages to clutter the event viewer)

However, to create an electronic address inside the postal address (LogisticsPostalAddress) you will have to use the LogisticsElectronicAddressEntity class to create the electronic address, after you modify the static method createElectronicAddressto accept parent location. (If you create the postal address as per the document, you will have the parent location with you)

I came across this piece of code which was required to check the AOT elements for certain things.
This iteration should work fine as long as all the developments done show up in your session.
The best way is to restart the AOS and run it to make sure the utilElements have all new objects

So i have found a bug in Ax relating to join statement.
Based on the Image, you can see that i am joining 2 tables, and setting a where statement for the first one to a tableId
All 3 should give me the same result.
However i get a compile error in the 3rd statement. It involves around checking the RefTableId field of Table 2, and comparing it to a tablenum method.

Ax X++ select statement join bug

The 1st method uses the same functions, but all the where clauses are after the join statements. This however can get ugly (unreadable) when there are a lot of where clauses as you would like to have them grouped up.//Join scenario 1
select firstonly table2
join table1
where table2.MyRefTableId == tablenum(Table2)
&& table1.SomeId == "ID00001";

The 2nd method of select statements groups the where clauses nicely. However to do that, I have to use the tablename2Id function instead.//Join scenario 2
select firstonly table2
where table2.MyRefTableId == global::tableName2Id(tablestr(Table2))
join table1
where table1.SomeId == "ID00001";

The 3rd method is the culprit, for which i have no explanation at the moment. Anyone want to shed some light on this?//Join scenario 3
select firstonly table2
where table2.MyRefTableId == tablenum(Table2)
join table1
where table1.SomeId == "ID00001";
This gives me a “Syntax error”